What goes into the determination of art value? What differenciates an skilled amateur price from say something from Picasso – assuming the viewer doesn’t know the artist
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the same as any other “value”: supply and demand.
“marketing” plays a huge role here, maybe not in the way you’re familiar with but more the “respect” and “opinion of respected individuals” kind of aspect, but in the end, supply and demand.
How much a buyer will pay for it. There are no objective factors to measure utility of art – so like everything else, it’s only worth as much as a buyer will pay for it.
Just like with company stocks, real estate, infrastructure building contracts or tulip bulbs, if you want to find the true value you put the item up for auction.
The form of the auction is largely irrelevant, the point is that you get several buyers to simultaneously tell you what the item is worth to them. Conveniently they factor in what they believe the item is worth to each other as well.
Well, I think art was a sentimental/emotional value and monetary value. Both are completely different imo.
In this case, you are referring to the monetary value.
In auctions and all of that, the price is set by the people buying it. If a certain artist is very well known and has a lot of popularity the price is obviously higher because it’s a business. Rich people are able to spend a shit ton of money on it so why wouldn’t the prices be extremely high?
And of course there’s the question of influence. Sometimes it’s not about skill, it’s about how revolutionary is work was at the time of execution. How much influence came from his work?
Some artist (or even composers) may be “better” or elevate their art skills when compared to the great masters, but master are masters because they set the standards and set new boundaries and expectations about art
Price of art in monetary terms is up to popularity and it can be even used as a staple of the owner’s status and all of that. But of course there’s a reason why said artist became popular.
I’m a musician, so sometimes we have the same question when faced with buying a CD: Why is Lang Lang’s CD more expensive that this other pianist that’s hyper skilled? Why does Lang Lang have more plays on Spotify that this other guy?
It’s not about emotional value or skill most of the times, it’s a question of popularity. The more extroverted and popular an artist is, more people will want to buy, see and experience it’s art. But usually there’s a reason why they became popular.
Art is not about beauty is about provoking emotions and feelings. So if somebody is popular, they definitely provoked a lot of emotions and feelings (being them good or bad)
Art value is set at the price people want go pay for it (auction -wise speaking). High search, high value.
EDIT: please let me know if I was clear. I don’t know if this answers the question at all
One thing about contemporary art is it’s very valuable for wealthy people who want to hide their wealth. There’s a loophole which can basically be exploited by paying someone to value a piece of art you own as very valuable (let’s say a million). Now, because they said so, you own a million dollar asset. If you donate that to a museum, you can write that off as a million dollar charitable donation, and you don’t have to pay any taxes that year.
It’s all subjective. When there’s only one, then those who can afford it will decide what it is worth to them. All it takes is one multimillionaire/billionaire to decide what they’re willing to pay to set its value. Typically art is going to be benchmarked against other art to help value it — how does it compare to other works by the same artist, how famous is the work, how attractive/popular is the work, comparisons to artists of similar fame/popularity, size of painting, how many works from that artist are available in total and/or will ever come up for sale (vs. in museum), etc.
Rich person goes to an appraiser and pays them to say it’s worth $1 million. Rich person then gives it to a hospital or something and writes off $1 million worth of taxes.
That’s how stated values are made. But it’s not the thing’s value. That’s just the price-tag for accounting and tax-dodging purposes. The value is always whatever someone is willing to pay and what the seller is willing to take.
The basis of that is mostly rich people trying to show up their friends with how much they can spend. This is actual money changing hands, but it’s usually never to the actual artist.
The utility of art is always zero. If it’s something like… a piece of marketing advertisement, or a game asset, or such, then it’s not really art.
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